Chapter : 1
"Dubbledore!" said Neville, his sweaty face suddenly transported, staring over Harry's shoulder.
"What?"
"DUBBLEDORE!"
Harry turned to look where Neville was staring. Directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, stood Albus Dumbledore, his wand aloft, his face white and furious. Harry felt a kind of electric charge surge through every particle of his body - they were saved.
Dumbledore sped down the steps past Neville and Harry, who had no more thought of leaving. Dumbledore was already at the foot of the steps when the Death Eaters nearest realised he was there. There were yells; one of the Death Eaters ran for it, scrabbling like a monkey up the stone steps opposite. Dumbledore's spell pulled him back as easily and effortlessly as though he had hooked him with an invisible line ―
Only one couple were still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix's jet of red light. He was laughing at her. "Come on, you can do better than that!" he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room.
From off the dais and to the side of the circle thing, Harry knew his godfather, Sirius Black, was not thinking properly. He was taunting his opponent, Bellatrix LeStrange. And standing right in front of that weird circle thing as he did so.
Harry knew, in his soul, that his godfather clearly did not know what sort of danger that circle represented. He knew it was dangerous. He raced up the two steps, just as his pseudo-uncle, Remus Lupin, reached out to grab him before he could move. The grab missed.
He sprinted the short distance and hit his godfather in his side, just as LeStrange cast a pale bolt of magical energy towards the older man. As per the laws of physics, the energy of Harry's momentum cannoned into the older man as he blocked that first bolt, propelling him away from in front of the arch while leaving Harry standing where his godfather stood; all the momentum in him, now cancelled.
Harry turned, raised his wand and cast, "Pro-teh―!" It was as far as he got before the mad witch's second spell reached him.
The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.
His eyes widened in shock as he was flung backwards, through that circle; hit with a banishing charm of all things.
It seemed to take Harry an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he soared backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.
Looking back, Sirius saw the look of surprise on his godson's face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in a high wind and then fell back into place.
Sirius heard Bellatrix LeStrange's triumphant scream, but knew it meant nothing ― Harry had only just fallen through the archway, he would reappear from the other side any second...
But Harry did not reappear. Instead, they heard a long mournful scream of both anguish and pain come from behind the veil that faded away.
"HARRY!" Sirius yelled, "HARRY!"
But as he stood and was about to sprint back toward the dais, the young auror and his cousin, Nymphadora Tonks, grabbed him around the chest, holding him back.
"There's nothing you can do, Sirius," she firmly stated.
"Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!"
"It's too late, Sirius."
"We can still reach him―"
Sirius struggled hard and viciously. However, he'd just managed to break the young witch's grip when he was then grabbed by the tall, dark-skinned Senior Auror, Kingsley Shacklebolt. There would be no breaking that man's grip.
"There's nothing you can do, Sirius... nothing," the man firmly, but empatheticly, stated. "He's gone."
"Nnnooooo!..." Sirius cried out.
Harry's last thought as he passed through the Veil was to try and get to his godfather. 'SIRIUS!' he screamed in his mind as all he saw was the circle thing shooting away from him as he very rapidly disappeared down a spiralling tunnel lined with fast moving, what looked like, silver clouds and streaks.
Trying to struggle to get back to his godfather, it was only a moment before he felt a strange wrench and agony from his scar. It felt as if something was ripped from his forehead.
The last thing he heard as the pain and agony of that caused him to fall unconscious, was a wailing mournful cry of "Nooooo...!"
For only a moment, as he felt blood flow from his again-opened wound on his forehead, he thought he saw a black, smoky mist leave his forehead and disappear. It even had a face - Voldemort's.
In the Veil Room, Sirius was in shock. There was movement going on around them, pointless bustling, the flashes of more spells. To Sirius it was meaningless noise, the deflected curses flying past them did not matter, nothing mattered except that his godson was gone.
Shacklebolt began to drag Sirius away from the dais with the man still staring at the archway.
Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry... to help him. If Harry was gone, as he knew he was, then it was all for nought.
Turning to see what else was going on, Sirius saw that Dumbledore had most of the remaining Death Eaters grouped in the middle of the room, seemingly immobilised by invisible ropes. Mad-Eye Moody had crawled across the room to where Tonks now lay and was attempting to revive her. Sirius hadn't even known she'd been hit after he'd broken free of her grip.
Across the other side of the dais, Lupin had carefully approached the Longbottom boy, Neville. "Here," Lupin quietly said. And, pointing his wand at Neville's legs, he said, "Finite."
The spell, a Tarantulegra of all things, was lifted. Neville's legs fell back onto the floor and remained still. Lupin's face was pale. "Let's ― let's find the others. Where are they all, Neville?"
Lupin had turned away from the archway as he spoke. It sounded as though every word was causing him pain.